Poor and Guilty

Times change, people change..life changes.

A normal guy with no agendas comes here with the understanding that a visa to Saudi Arabia is Bought. He has spent his fortune in trying to come here because he, in his ignorance, feels that he will make a lot of money here and his family will live happily ever after. He thinks that he will buy a visa from an agent, who has bought a visa from a Saudi, come here..find a job and then pay a fee to his sponsor for an iqama. This is what he knows because this is what he is told.

No one explained the regulations to him. Not his government, not the Saudi embassy, and not the greedy agents. He is a simple villager and he is looking to earn. That is all he is.

And, when the KSA authorities decide that this activity of visa sale has to stop, and rightly so.. They catch him, jail him, make him suffer and he loses every penny he has earned to “expediter” .. Then they send him back home..blacklisted in the GCC. While the agents party on his money.

Go figure!

A Bengali told me that not only did he buy a visa to come here, this year he paid 20,000 for its renewal..he asked his wife to sell jewelry and send him money. I just stared at his face.
“Are you stupid?”
No, he said that he could not go back unless he earned enough to pay back his loans at home.

A simple Saudi man in Al Kharj opened a small workshop because four Bangladeshis, sponsored by someone else, proposed that they will run it and pay him 4000 a month. This was his only earning. An old village man supporting a family. 4000 was good.

Then, rules changed and “free” labor became the “illegal” and most wanted. The four guys abandoned the workshop and went to their sponsor out of fear. The old man lost the only source of income he had, and so did those four guys. One of the Bangladeshis told me this one day before he left KSA. What broke his heart were the tears of that old man..

Breaking the regulations of any country is not right, I agree. And a good system of organizing populations is needed so that there is balance.

What I do not understand is this: why must the poor labor and poor local, who in fact are Victims of misrepresentation and illegal practice, pay?

You tell me.